5 Best Japanese Knives That Chefs From Every Walk Of Life Must Own

All chefs, whether they are professionals or could be just like you who love spending time in the kitchen, a good knife is any chefs most fundamental and essential tool. Interestingly enough, many chefs have one thing in common, that is they all preferred to use Japanese knife. Is yourself like-minded too? In this quick guide, we will look into tips in selecting a Japanese knife and what are the best Japanese knives to buy.

Guide to Selecting the Best Japanese Knife

Many people often buy the whole set of knives and some of which are either used very infrequently or not used at all. Remember that about 60% to 70% of the cutting work is done by one or two knives, from slices, dices, minces, juliennes and de-bones.

Instead of buying the whole set of knives, perhaps you should consider with one or two, to begin with.

Find What Suits You

Before buying a knife, there are a few qualities of the knife you need to know:

The quality of the blade is made of what steel or alternative materials.

The method that was used to make the blade, for example, stamped, roll forged, drop forged, hand forged and hand hammered.

The sharpness and the longevity of the edge of the blades.

The balance and feel of the handle of the knife

The quality of handle and quality of manufacturing.

Length

To choose the right length of the knife, there are two factors you must take into consideration.

First, the size of the chopping board and the workspace. If you do not have a spacious room for your elbow and with just a small chopping board, you need a short Japanese Knife unless otherwise.

​Second, the size of the foods that you regularly prepare. If you often work with big items like a huge slab of meats, watermelon or even a cabbage, you will find a short Japanese knife does not come in handy, but you need a longer one.

​You need to have these two in the plan before you decide to choose a Japanese knife.

The Difference between the Steel

Many edges of the Stainless Steel knives do not hold well properly unless they have been heating treated or hardened by other methods that were to make the blade. If one knife does not have a proper making process on its blade, the knife will lose the edge pretty quickly. And you do not want that to happen to your knife.

Carbon Steels

The knives are reactive if it is made out of carbon steel. They would get rusty quickly if you left the carbon steel knife dirty and wet or even work with a lot of acidic food products.However, Carbon steel knives are easier to resharpen overall compared to the stainless carbon steels.

Stainless Carbon Steels

Similar to the carbon steels knives but the stainless carbon steels knives can survive from rusty a little longer if you left them dirty and wet. The stainless carbon steels knives are harder to resharpen because of the extra laminated layered.For instance, a general guideline is that the higher the carbon content of the steel, the longer the knife edge will last as well as easier to resharpen.

Top Five Best Japanese Knives

The reason why we only share these top 5 best Japanese knives to you is that we only present you with the most popular ones among many other similar products. We did research over hundreds of best Japanese knives on Amazon website, and these TOP FIVE are the best based on their star ratings as well as the highest Net Customer Satisfaction (NCS) rates.

Tojiro DP Gyutou

Fujiwara Kanefusa knives have a very long history as revered Japanese swordsmiths which the company has traced the history back some 25 generations.

The Tojiro DP Gyutou is one well rated Japanese knife with its ability of stain and rust resistance. The size of the Tojiro DP Gyutou is 8.2-inch. The handle design was well thought out for both the left and right handed users.

Global G-4

The Global G-4 is lightweight and precisely balanced 7-inch chef knife. The blade of the Global G-4 is made of high-tech molybdenum/vanadium stainless steel, and the edge of the knife retains exceptionally well razor sharpness. Moreover, the handle is stainless steel molded for comfort.

On the bright side, the Global G-4 comes with lifetime warranty against defects and breakage. To find out more, click on the link and see if this is the knife for you today!

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Shun Premier - 8-Inch

The Shun Premier is an 8-inch chef’s knife which fit as an all-purpose knife for chopping and slicing both meat and vegetables. The surface of the blade is layered with Damascus steel and hand-hammered finish. The hand-hammered finish reduces drag when cutting, keeping foods from sticking to the knife blade.

The handle of the knife is wrapped in premium Pakkawood which provides not just the comfort but also easy to hold and secure grips. The Shun Premier is dishwasher safe, but it is still strong recommended that you hand wash and air dry it to protect the blades and the quality of the knife.

The Shun Premier offers a limited lifetime warranty. Click on the link to find out more about it now!

Shun DM0706 Classic - 8-inch

This knife is an 8-inch Japanese knife that is designed for slicing, chopping, dicing and more. The blade of the knife is made from VG-10 stainless steel clad with 32 layers of high-carbon stainless steel.

The Shun DM0706 Classic is not just merely any ordinary Japanese knife, but the design of the Shun Classic is well patterned, layered surface and stunning which also added rush resistance on the blade.

Similar to the Shun Premier, the handle was laminated by black Pakkawood that gives maximum comfortable and safety grip of it. Again, it is dishwasher safe, but we still recommend that clean it by hand-wash and air dry it to prolong its quality.

Kyocera Santoku Knife (2 Piece Pack)

The Kyocera Santoku Knife set comes with 5.5-inch and 4.5-inch utility knives. The knife has a razor-sharp blade which helps the blade stays sharper for a longer period. Besides that, it is exceptional purity which means it will never brown foods, will not alter the taste and smell while cutting the foods.

The material composition of the blade is Zirconium-oxide, and ABS plastic makes the handle. The Kyocera Santoku knife provides a lifetime warranty; the Kyocera Company will issue a refund or replacement if your knife is damaged.

Our Pick

As mentioned, we go through hundreds of products listing at Amazon and also study the ratings left by previous buyers to find the best Japanese knives in the market. Besides that, we also calculate the overall net customer satisfaction grade because we want to see how happy is the previous buyers with their purchase of the product. From our finding, we can say that Tojiro and Shun are the best Japanese knife makers’ brands.

Also, the Tojiro DP Gyutou and Shun Classic are the 2 Japanese knife score favorably for the ratings as well as the NCS grade compare to the rest. We believe that you would find their Japanese knives a good buy too.

Chopping Away

There you have it. We hope that this quick guide has given you some useful information about Japanese knife and also has helped you in picking the best Japanese knives to add to your kitchen.

If you are new to Japanese knife, we think you can give the Tojiro and Shun a try. If you think that we left out any good Japanese knife brand or models, let us know by commenting below.

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About the author

Hi! My name is Gordan Ladd and welcome to Gordan Ladd's Kitchen - a blog that writes all about my culinary experience. Here you can find all sorts of guides and tips for food and cooking as well as best kitchenware reviews and more. Stay for a while and let me know what you think of my site. Or head over to my blog and see all my awesome posts I have ready for you.

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